Alex Salmond 'should quit Remain campaign before he does more damage'

Alex Salmond should quit the campaign to keep Britain in the EU before "before he does any more damage", the Liberal Democrats said yesterday after he used the first TV debate to predict a second independence referendum within two years of Brexit.

Willie Rennie, the Scottish Lib Dem leader, said Mr Salmond had behaved like a “not-so-secret agent for the Leave campaign” during the BBC One broadcast on Thursday night when he appeared alongside Labour’s Alan Johnson for the Remain campaign.

He said the former First Minister had spent more time “rubbishing” the pro-EU campaign and talking about Scottish independence than making the positive case for staying in Europe.

Mr Salmond yesterday rejected Mr Rennie’s criticism as a “clownish” publicity stunt and said that he and Mr Johnson, the former Home Secretary, had won the debate “hands down”. Their opponents were Liam Fox, the Tory former Defence Secretary, and Ukip’s Diane James.

However, the Telegraph can disclose the Scottish Government will not distribute hard copies of a brochure it has posted on its website outlining the benefits of the EU. In contrast, they spent £1.3 million on the White Paper on Scottish independence.

She said the public were too “savvy” to believe the document, which was unveiled only hours earlier by David Cameron and George Osborne, and called for them to abandon a “miserable, scare-mongering fear-based campaign.”

Mr Rennie said yesterday: “Too many senior figures in the SNP are approaching this 2016 referendum with a 2014 mind-set. Alex Salmond is a serial offender.

"His threats about another independence vote may encourage his supporters to back Brexit. His attacks on the Remain campaign are undermining it and risking Brexit. On both counts he is risking our place in the European Union, not supporting it. Alex Salmond should opt out of the campaign before he does any more damage."

Mr Salmond told the BBC debate, which was filmed in Glasgow in front of an audience of voters under 30, that he did not believe some of the Remain campaign’s “scaremongering”, adding that it would not “economic apocalypse” if Britain left the EU but there would be more jobs and choices “if we stay in”.

He repeated that if Britain voted to leave against the will of a majority of Scots, then a second referendum would have to be held within the next two years, the period over which the UK would negotiate its withdrawal from the EU.

A spokesman for the former First Minister said: “By every account, Alex Salmond and Alan Johnson won the debate hands down for the Remain team. Their approach to the debate dovetailed perfectly, without indulging in any of the scaremongering which has bedevilled both Westminster-led campaigns to date.

"Rennie’s contributions to the Remain campaign so far have amounted to no more than a continuation of his clownish attempts to attack the SNP by any means necessary as his only way he can get noticed.”